The IAEA’s confidential report to member states

The United States on Friday sanctioned companies in Iran, China and the United Arab Emirates for doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line Group and on three Iranian entities over conventional arms proliferation.

These are the latest in a series of measures aimed at stepping up pressure on Tehran in the waning days of US President Donald Trump’s administration, which ends on January 20.

He said Iran’s Marine Industries Organization, Aerospace Industries Organization and the Iran Aviation Industries Organization had also been blacklisted over conventional arms proliferation.

Iran has been a focus of Trump during his four years in office as he tried to force Tehran back into talks over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and its activities in the Middle East. In 2018, Trump quit an Iran nuclear deal that Tehran struck with world powers in 2015 to rein in its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief because it did not go far enough.

Trump said he was open to negotiating a much wider pact that would seek more extensive constraints on Iran’s nuclear programme, as well as limits on its development of ballistic missiles and its sponsorship of militias in regional nations such as Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, who will succeed Trump on Wednesday, has said he will return to the 2015 nuclear pact if Iran resumes strict compliance with it.

Iran has started work on uranium metal-based fuel for a research reactor, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog and Tehran said on Wednesday, in the latest breach of its nuclear deal with six significant powers as the country presses for a lifting of US sanctions.

Kazem Gharib Abadi, Iran’s representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed the country has started working on the fuel, saying everything has been reported to the agency.

“Agency inspectors visited the factory where the fuel will be produced three days ago,” he said.

“From a technical standpoint, this puts Iran among advanced countries in producing new fuels.”

A handout picture released by Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization shows the interior of the Fordow Uranium Conversion Facility in Qom, in the north of the country [File: Handout/Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AFP]
Iran has been accelerating its breaches of the deal in the past two months. Some of those steps were required by a law passed in response to the killing of its top nuclear scientist in November, which Tehran has blamed on its arch foe Israel.

They are also, however, part of a process started by Tehran in 2019 of committing breaches in response to US President Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the deal and his reimposition of US sanctions that the deal lifted in exchange for restrictions on the country’s nuclear activities.

The moves raise pressure on US President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office next week and has pledged to return the US to the deal if Iran first resumes full compliance. Iran wants Washington to lift sanctions first.

“[IAEA] Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi today informed IAEA Member States about recent developments regarding Iran’s plans to conduct R&D activities on uranium metal production as part of its declared aim to design an improved type of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor,” the IAEA said in a statement.

The agency issues ad hoc reports to member states when Iran commits a new breach of the deal, though it declines to call them breaches, leaving that call to parties to the 2015 accord.

The deal specifically imposes a 15-year ban on Iran producing or acquiring uranium metal, a sensitive material that can be used in the core of a nuclear bomb.

The IAEA’s confidential report to member states, obtained by Reuters news agency, said Iran had indicated it plans to produce uranium metal from natural uranium and then produce uranium metal enriched up to 20 percent for fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor.

The deal also says that can only happen in small batches and in consultation with parties to the deal after 10 years.